Yet, while it may be true -- although it remains unproven -- that some innocents were put at risk and that U.S. diplomacy has been made more complicated, Manning's unauthorized release of hundreds of thousands of documents must be weighed against the U.S. government's hiding of hundreds of millions of documents.
The simple truth is that the vast majority of those "secret" documents do not represent any reasonable threat to national security. And, to the contrary, the continued over-classification represents a clear and present danger to the Republic, both because secrecy undermines democracy and because ignorance makes voters vulnerable to deceptive politicians who, in turn, can inflict serious harm on the real national security.
So, when you hear someone condemning Bradley Manning for releasing government secrets, you might think about my attempt to go through the proper channels to see 30-year-old documents on U.S. policy toward Iraq -- and being told that I'll have to wait at least "128 months."
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